Case Studies

Education

A peer-to-peer learning network was experiencing strong top-of-funnel member acquisition but diminishing early-year retention rates. They wanted to leverage technology to transform Member Experience but lacked a tactical viewpoint on the drivers of retention and how to prioritize initiatives that enhanced the value proposition.

• Generated 25-hours of primary research via empathy-style interviews with Members and the executive committee to create a current-state journey map and to surface high-value opportunities.
• Designed a future-state Member Experience using the Service Design Blueprint approach to illustrate people, process and technology requirements for client buy-in.
• Conducted comprehensive evaluation of available tech solutions that could be adapted to deliver the future state experience and used rapid prototyping to simulate the impact for stakeholders.

We de-risked the Go-To-Market strategy for a scalable MVP by integrating a Beta approach that promotes user engagement 12 weeks sooner and delivers incremental LTV from 35% of Members with a Payback Period of 2.5 years.

Fintech

A financial technology company was shifting their acquisition focus from brick and mortar to online. The online channel was relatively new and the conversion rates were far below that of the retail channel. The challenge was to increase conversion while maintaining reasonable marketing costs.

• Analyzed conversion funnel to identify friction points in the account opening experience. Conducted user testing in a lab environment to understand customer challenges with the user interface. 
• Completed market research of competitors to understand best practices and product features. We created an end-to-end customer experience journey map of the ideal mobile experience. 
• We developed a business case to demonstrate the expected ROI of the infrastructure and resource commitments required to transform the organization to a mobile-first model. The proposal was approved by the executive committee and the Board of Directors. 
• We worked with Product, Design and Technology teams to scope feature enhancements and prioritize items on the integrated roadmap.

We delivered a 18-month roadmap that drove incremental online customer acquisitions of 11% through a seamless customer experience that enhanced conversion rates by 15%.

Financial Services

A national financial services company with an expansive brick-and-mortar presence was deploying a radically re-designed network strategy and was seeking to develop an innovative retail experience to drive consumer adoption and engagement.

• Developed a comprehensive list of experience frictions and opportunities within the new retail concept through side-by-side field research with front-line teams.  The approach of embedding with the associates created a platform for co-creation.
• Built a venture-inspired process for concept innovation with an always-on top of funnel to source 1-pager “pitches” from across the retail organization. This enabled the front-line associates to be the innovators and change agents. 
• Formed an executive committee to facilitate quarterly prioritization and selection of top concepts to receive initial funding for design and low-fi prototyping in a live customer-facing “lab” environment
• We developed criteria for selecting and funding the top ideas to ensure that the concepts laddered up to the key objectives of the organization.

We implemented a continuous experience innovation cycle within the organization that generated 20 concepts with 5 funded prototypes and 2 in-market MVP experiences within the first 12 months.

Fintech

A consumer lending organization was facing deteriorating trends in returning customers rates  which historically drove the majority of the revenue base. Following a period of strong secular demand for unsecured personal credit, the lender found that it’s once dominant one-size-fits all marketing strategy was underperforming as consumer expectations and competitive forces grew. 

• We performed an audit of what data is available for segmentation and categorized each data element by value, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics.
• We ran summary statistics on the data and evaluated the meaningfulness of each parameter in order to select and prepare data for segmentation. 
• We established baseline profiles of the data to under the distribution of current and former customers across the selected segmentation variables.
• We applied a non-objective segmentation method (k-means clustering) to surface the valuable relationships in the data and identify insightful segments.

We delivered a high-resolution, data-informed view of the customer base that was used to generate customer personas. The outputs of a segmentation analysis included 6 optimized customer segments with visibility into the distinguishing features and characteristics among them.  The segmentation and personas informed and influenced work streams for Marketing, Sales & Service and Product Management.

Financial Services

A large national financial services company with a newly acquired brick-and-mortar presence and the largest digital retail bank was attempting to integrate the experiences across different channels and branch formats into a cohesive, digital first organization.

• We conducted research to understand the current state experience of customers and associates and synthesized our data into themes and insights to inform the design of the omni-channel future state experience. 
• We prototyped innovative experiences to flip the script on the “normal” bank experience in order to understand what worked and what didn’t.  We embraced learnings from the failures and nurtured our winning experiences. 
• We adopted a Beta approach for the go-to-market strategy and launched the future-state CX model in 5 test locations in order to iterate the experience with live feedback from customers and associates.

The company was able to successfully scale the “ Reimagined Banking Experience” we develop across a national footprint and deliver an industry leading integrated customer experience.